11/14/13 Cape May

Delaware Chesapeake Bay's 

Arrived in Cape May at 2330 on Wednesday night after a glorious full day of sailing in the sun and cold. No rain and no snow so we were delighted. Took the dinghy in to the sleepy little town to explore, not much going on. Replentished supplies including the correct size back brace for me, Tim has his own.  Thank you Mike DelloRosso for all of you recommendations to cure my aching back, it takes a village to keep a woman healthy! Mike is the BEST Physical Therapist I have come across in the Seacoast area. He runs the Orthopedic and Sports Therapy in Somersworth, NH. And I highly recommend him to anyone who needs his services.

The Active Captain app has been a great guide throughout the trip, we have referred to it often for guidance. Through their recommendation, we found a delicious authentic Mexican restaurant run by a mother and her two daughters, 5 DiMayo. We would highly recommend this place a few blocks from the Utsch's Marina in Cape May.

Two mighty cold sailors !

Cape May home circa 1899.

Departed Cape May in the morning and fought our way around Cape May point with it's many shoals and adverse wind and tide. The predicted SW winds at10-15 knots for what would have been a nice sail up Delaware Bay turned out to be 0-5 kts from the NE so we had to motor all day. At least it was calm, warm and pleasant. Tim did some fishing but trolling at 6 knots is a bit fast so no fish yet. We're hoping someday all that fishing gear will eventually catch something! Motoring along the shipping channel and were continuously surprised at how quickly these big boys show up in the back door.

We arrived at Cohansey Creek after sunset, thank goodness for the navigation apps on the IPhone and  IPad helping to guide us through thin waters as  darkness falls because many of these thin water bays have very few navigation bouy's. The full moon has been helpful.

Sunrise in the creek was magical and we were the only vessel in site.

Saturday we motored up to the Chesapeake Delaware Canal where we stopped to refuel. This trip has been quite a learning experience for us both. For instance, never trust a water hose on a dock. We pulled into what turned out to be a rather run down marina and filled our water tanks while getting fuel. Then the kid on the dock tells us that the same hose we stuck in our water tank is inserted into boat  holding tanks to flush them with water after pumping out sewage, yuk. So now we need to flush our tanks with chlorine bleach to kill whatever we may have introduced into the tanks. Of course the little store on site didn't have any bleach. The review of this place we upload to Active Captain will be most colorful. To top things off the kid then tells us the tide has gone out enough that with our 5 foot draft we can't get out until it rises a couple feet, so now we're stuck here for 4 hours. We made good use of the time doing a long overdue fuel filter change and some organizing and cleaning. 

We escaped around 6pm and heading into the Canal which was well light and had no boat traffic. An hour later we anchored in the Chesapeake City basin on the Canal. This is great little harbor and anchorage with a free town dock and a hopping marina bar scene at the Chesapeake Inn. We had dinner at a nice little bar two blocks from the water and the bartender sold us a gallon of bleach so we didn't have to walk miles to a convenience store that might have bleach. Unfortunately the dockside water has been turned off so our flushing activities might have to wait.